# ST:TNG question **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 15, 2015, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-tng-question/722616 "2015-06-15T21:18:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-tng-question/722616/41 "2015-06-17T13:01:11Z")
> [@muldoonthief](#): > > Huh? Did you mean to say “the first time we saw Romulans in a Klingon ship in TOS was in The Enterprise Incident.” ? Because “The Enterprise Incident” was in season 3, and there were plenty of Klingon ships run by Klingons in previous seasons. Like “The Trouble with Tribbles”. IIRC, the first time a Klingon ship was actually shown where you could _see_ the design was indeed in “TEI” (or maybe “Elaan of Troyus”; I’ll have to check at Memory Alpha). Before that, there were no opticals of the ship (Matt Jefferies had designed it only in the second season); the only time one was “shown” (as opposed to merely being talked about) was in “Friday’s Child,” and then it was only a blob on the main viewscreen. In “TTWT,” only the \*Enterprise \*was seen hovering off the space station; evidently ATM hadn’t gotten around to issuing its model of a Klingon ship yet (I was probably one of the first to buy one in 1969). I’m sure the matter has been recitified in the remastered episodes, but watch the originals and you’ll see—they talked about Klingon ships a lot, but you never really saw one until the third season. It seemed clear to me that the original Romulan ships did not have warp capability (and don’t ask me how they managed to travel so far into space at sublight velocities). This is why their alliance with the Klingons in the third season posed such a grave threat to the Federation: up until then, it had been fairly easy to keep them contained in their own little empire. ---
**Author:** ![Your\_Great\_Darsh\_Face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ac8455/32.png) [@Your\_Great\_Darsh\_Face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Your_Great_Darsh_Face)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-tng-question/722616/42 "2015-06-17T13:34:17Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > IIRC, the first time a Klingon ship was actually shown where you could _see_ the design was indeed in “TEI” (or maybe “Elaan of Troyus”; I’ll have to check at Memory Alpha). Before that, there were no opticals of the ship (Matt Jefferies had designed it only in the second season); the only time one was “shown” (as opposed to merely being talked about) was in “Friday’s Child,” and then it was only a blob on the main viewscreen. > > In “TTWT,” only the \*Enterprise \*was seen hovering off the space station; evidently ATM hadn’t gotten around to issuing its model of a Klingon ship yet (I was probably one of the first to buy one in 1969). > > I’m sure the matter has been recitified in the remastered episodes, but watch the originals and you’ll see—they talked about Klingon ships a lot, but you never really saw one until the third season. > > It seemed clear to me that the original Romulan ships did not have warp capability (and don’t ask me how they managed to travel so far into space at sublight velocities). This is why their alliance with the Klingons in the third season posed such a grave threat to the Federation: up until then, it had been fairly easy to keep them contained in their own little empire. Yes, it should have been a journey of years for the Romulans to get anywhere in “Balance of Terror”, unless the Federation outposts were only a few light-days from their home system. Similarly, the _Constellation_ should have been useless against the planet-killer in TDM, since the Machine was warp-capable and Scotty could only get impulse back on line. The Klingon ship _[did](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaan_of_Troyius#Production)_ appear in “Elaan of Troyius”. ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2015, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-tng-question/722616/43 "2015-06-17T14:23:57Z")
> [@Your\_Great\_Darsh\_Face](#): > > Yes, it should have been a journey of years for the Romulans to get anywhere in “Balance of Terror”, unless the Federation outposts were only a few light-days from their home system. Similarly, the _Constellation_ should have been useless against the planet-killer in TDM, since the Machine was warp-capable and Scotty could only get impulse back on line. > > The Klingon ship _[did](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaan_of_Troyius#Production)_ appear in “Elaan of Troyius”. Huh - I know you can see a Klingon ship in TWT, but that must an addition in the remastered version. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-tng-question/722616/44 "2015-06-18T00:05:24Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > If the Defiant was cloaked, couldn’t the Romulans use it anywhere, with anyone (or no one) having control over it? Who would know? I meant the Romulan office on the Defiant only had control over the cloaking device itself, not the entire ship. > [@BigT](#): > > …Plus, Romulans are usually pretty sneaky in their dealings. Maybe they were afraid there would be visual tells that would give away when they were lying… The Romulans also had no desire to reveal their kinship with the Vulcans to Terrans (& vice versa). ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-tng-question/722616/45 "2015-06-18T00:19:44Z")
> [@muldoonthief](#): > > Huh - I know you can see a Klingon ship in TWT, but that must an addition in the remastered version. Definitely. In the original you only see the Enterprise and the space station. Similarly, in “Errand of Mercy” the Enterprise blows up a small Klingon ship in the teaser, but you never see the occupying ship, either while they are on the planet or when Sulu tries to go into battle. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-tng-question/722616/46 "2015-06-18T00:23:18Z")
[QUOTE=Your Great Darsh Face;18445573 Similarly, the _Constellation_ should have been useless against the planet-killer in TDM, since the Machine was warp-capable and Scotty could only get impulse back on line. [/quote] I think the situation was that the planet killer was still eating and so not going anywhere, and didn’t think the fleas would bother it at all. It must have been warp capable or else the danger to the populated part of the galaxy wouldn’t have been for a dozen years at least - or maybe thousands. In any case, they found other recently destroyed systems. > [@](#): > > The Klingon ship _[did](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaan_of_Troyius#Production)_ appear in “Elaan of Troyius”. Yeah, but TEI was first. I swear the Klingon ship (which I had a model kit of) showed up in other shows also. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-tng-question/722616/47 "2015-06-18T00:27:21Z")
> [@Your\_Great\_Darsh\_Face](#): > > Similarly, the _Constellation_ should have been useless against the planet-killer in TDM, since the Machine was warp-capable and Scotty could only get impulse back on line. Fanwank attempt - the planet-killer used only slower-than-light-speed within a star system. After it finished trashing all the suitable planets in L-374, it would go to warp and move on to the next system. Until then, even a fairly damaged Constellation-class ship could match its speed on impulse. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-tng-question/722616/48 "2015-06-18T00:28:13Z")
> [@fachverwirrt](#): > > Fair enough, but the treaty is explicitly the result of the Tomed incident, and was basically an exchange; Federation doesn’t develop cloaking technology, Romulans stop mucking about outside of their territory. Facts are just a crutch for people who are afraid to stand by their prejudices. ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-tng-question/722616/49 "2015-06-18T03:02:57Z")
Warp drive for cloaking tech, either above board or stoled by each side. Maybe the “Romulan Empire” was in a fairly dense section of space with not a lot of distance between star systems. Still hard to maintain an empire under such circumstances, but still… ---
**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-tng-question/722616/50 "2015-06-18T04:08:37Z")
I’ve got it! Try this fanwank on for size: We tend to think of Warp Drive as equivalent to FTL travel, but it’s a technology, a specific _means_ of achieving FTL speeds. On DS9 the Siscos achieved it with basically a solar sail. :rolleyes: (True, they still called it Warp, but they were speaking imprecisely.) Humans (and most races, it seems) create Warp Drive as their first successful FTL technology, but maybe the Romulans didn’t. Maybe Romulus doesn’t have any dilithiium to mine. (On TOS, it was definitely treated as a limited natural resource that had to mined on specific planets.) One thing that seems to be special about Warp Drive is that it doesn’t seem to be very limited by acceleration. Sometimes the Enterprise would accelerate gradually (but extremely quickly when you consider the supposed speeds they were describing), especially when they were pushing the engines to their limit or giving them a shakedown like in TMP, but other times they seem to jump more or less instantaneously to a given speed. And it’s clear that once a given speed is reached, the engines have to continue to operate to maintain that speed, or the ship will very quickly “drop out of warp.” This is in contradistinction to a traditional impulse engine that provides thrust (i.e., acceleration) when it’s on, and lets the vehicle coast when it’s off. The Romulans in BoT _must_ have had FTL travel, but maybe they achieved it differently. Instead of a single technology that creates a subspace bubble and propels the ship instantaneously to superluminal speeds, they used an inferior method that produced a subspace bubble allowing for FTL travel but did not propel the ship forward. Forward movement still had to be achieved with a simple impulse engine that had to accelerate the ship gradually from zero (however defined) to 300,000 kph just to reach the equivalent of Warp Factor 1, and then linearly from there, rather than the either instantaneous or at least exponential acceleration of a Warp Drive. ---
**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-tng-question/722616/51 "2015-06-18T04:16:44Z")
Didn’t notice in time to edit, but that should read “300,000 kps” in the last sentence, not “kph.” That’s what I get for being lazy and not wanting to type “km/s” on a virtual keyboard. ---
**Author:** ![escaped](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/848f3c/32.png) [@escaped](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/escaped)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-tng-question/722616/52 "2015-06-18T04:21:58Z")
> [@bup](#): > > Although it’s never stated explicitly, I feel we can confidently conclude Jimmy Carter’s preserved-in-a-jar head was involved in negotiating the Treaty of Algeron. It is preserved for special purposes/😛 ---
**Author:** ![Your\_Great\_Darsh\_Face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ac8455/32.png) [@Your\_Great\_Darsh\_Face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Your_Great_Darsh_Face)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-tng-question/722616/53 "2015-06-18T05:35:03Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Fanwank attempt - the planet-killer used only slower-than-light-speed within a star system. After it finished trashing all the suitable planets in L-374, it would go to warp and move on to the next system. Until then, even a fairly damaged Constellation-class ship could match its speed on impulse. Maybe, but I’m fairly sure that at one point the PK is chasing the _Enterprise_ at a very smart clip indeed, which should have removed the pair of them from the vicinity of the _Constellation_. But perhaps I need to watch the episode again. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-tng-question/722616/54 "2015-06-18T09:56:00Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Definitely. In the original you only see the Enterprise and the space station. Similarly, in “Errand of Mercy” the Enterprise blows up a small Klingon ship in the teaser, but you never see the occupying ship, either while they are on the planet or when Sulu tries to go into battle. And in “Private Little War,” the Klingon ship is always “on the other side of the planet.” Spock in “Elaan of Troyus”: “Our ‘ghost’ has materialized!” Scotty in “Enterprise Incident”: “That’s a _Klingon_ ship!” (_Gasp!_) Also, in the original “Journey to Babel” the Orion raider was nothing but a spinning blob of light. Anybody else never notice that the ion-propelled ship from the Planet of Retarded Women in “Spock’s Brain” was also used by aliens (silver-skinned, no doubt) in an episode of _ **Time Tunnel** _? (Or have they substituted a new one in the remastered episode?) ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-tng-question/722616/55 "2015-06-18T10:42:03Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > Anybody else never notice that the ion-propelled ship from the Planet of Retarded Women in “Spock’s Brain” was also used by aliens (silver-skinned, no doubt) in an episode of _ **Time Tunnel** _? (Or have they substituted a new one in the remastered episode?) They have! This is what it looked like originally: [![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwDWaOBSMs8&t=450) This is what it looks like now: [![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j6WH_KSI1s) ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-tng-question/722616/56 "2015-06-18T14:12:07Z")
> [@Dale\_Sams](#): > > My fanwank was that the Feds are peaceful explorers. Why do they need cloaking devices? That’s just what Roddenberry said. > [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Fanwank attempt - the planet-killer used only slower-than-light-speed within a star system. After it finished trashing all the suitable planets in L-374, it would go to warp and move on to the next system. Until then, even a fairly damaged Constellation-class ship could match its speed on impulse. Decker’s ship was the _Constellation_, but it was a _Constitution_-class ship. ---
**Author:** ![fachverwirrt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/94ad74/32.png) [@fachverwirrt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fachverwirrt)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-tng-question/722616/57 "2015-06-18T14:33:30Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Facts are just a crutch for people who are afraid to stand by their prejudices. I spent literally minutes wiki-ing those facts. MINUTES! ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-tng-question/722616/58 "2015-06-18T18:21:51Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Decker’s ship was the _Constellation_, but it was a _Constitution_-class ship. I stand suitably admonished. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-tng-question/722616/59 "2015-06-18T19:11:33Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I stand suitably admonished. Go forth and geek-sin no more. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2015, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-tng-question/722616/60 "2015-06-18T21:14:54Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > > [@Dale Sams](#): > > > > My fanwank was that the Feds are peaceful explorers. Why do they need cloaking devices? > > That’s just what Roddenberry said. The Prime Directive would seem to recommend general usage of a cloaking device, so that you don’t risk primitive cultures from accidentally spotting a space ship. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-tng-question/722616.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/st-tng-question/722616.md?page=4)